Erardi: Mike Leake fun to watch at the plate

Game day feature: Reds pitcher has a career .283 batting average

Apr. 22, 2013

Unlike many of his pitching colleagues throughout baseball, Mike Leake is anything but an automatic out. In fact, over the past three seasons, he has more hits than any pitcher in the league. / Enquirer file photo

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Mike Leake on . . .

--- His triple that short-hopped the center field wall last week:"I put everything I could into that one. Unfortunately, I went to the deepest part of the yard. Now I know I can’t go deep to center.’’

--- Why he ‘‘swings hard sometimes.’’‘I do it when I’m struggling (at the plate), to get myself out of the ‘swing soft,’ just-make-contact (mentality),’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t like giving away at-bats. If it looks like I’m swinging for the fences, it’s because I’m just trying to hit the ball hard.’’

--- On becoming, last Wednesday, the first Reds pitcher to score three runs in a game since Danny Jackson in 1988.

‘‘Man, they’ve got statistics for everything.’’

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If you attend tonight’s game vs. the Chicago Cubs, note this little wrinkle in the normal viewing habits of Reds fans when it’s time for the eminently watchable Shin-Soo Choo to come to bat for the second time.

And why is that?

Because Mike Leake is coming to bat just before Choo.

Unlike many of his pitching colleagues throughout baseball, Leake is anything but an automatic out.

In fact, over the past three seasons, he has more hits than any pitcher in the league.

Leake has a career .283 batting average (49-for-173), something that some of his non-pitching Reds teammates can only wish for. And his .315 career on-base percentage would make past Reds leadoff hitters envious.

Leake also has two career home runs and six doubles – and thanks to his last outing -- that rarest of entries in a pitcher’s "standard batting’’ line on baseball-reference.com: A triple.

Leake scored three runs last Wednesday night.

He's the first Reds pitcher to do that in 25 years. Leake was a toddler when Reds pitcher Danny Jackson scored three times on Sept. 4, 1988.

All of this makes Leake eminently watchable, too, if only because he’s as likely to be starting a rally or be in the middle of one, as he is to be doing what most of his pitching brethren do: Ending one.

If and when the designated hitter rule comes to the National League (and it would seem to be more when than if), nobody is going to be more disappointed than Leake.

But he’s under no delusion why he’s here and what alone will keep him here: His pitching.

However, as anybody can tell you who’s ever done it . . .

Hitting sure is fun.

And Leake takes pride in it, because 1.) He knows it gives the Reds a better chance of winning the game, 2.) He is living up to the way he was taught to play it.

‘‘My dad taught me at an early age that one of the most fun things to do is getting to run the bases and to show how good you are instinctually,’’ said Leake, after his 3-for-4 night last Wednesday in the Reds’ 11-2 victory over the Phillies. ‘‘So, yes, I do take pride in that, because of him. One step might be the difference between the team winning or losing.’’

Not lost in all this, is that last Wednesday, Leake (1-0, 4.26 ERA) had what was probably his best outing as a big leaguer: 7 innings, three hits, 0 runs, 7 strikeouts, 0 walks.

Keep pitching like that, and there will be plenty of these “hitting-pitcher’’ stories.

Don’t pitch well, and you’ll quickly become a trivia question, a pitcher who could hit but couldn’t pitch. Leake knows it isn’t a fine line.

Until the Reds signed him, Cincinnati was nowhere near even being on Leake’s radar. If you had asked Leake what league the ’Nati was in, it would have been a 50-50 guess on his part.

"I remember thinking, ‘Man, I hope they’re not an AL team,’ " recalled Leake. ‘‘Because I wanted to hit. It’s something I always enjoyed doing. When I found out they were an NL team, it gave me a little bit of a smile, just because I knew I’d get the chance to hit."

Now that he’s been around a while, the fourth-year veteran can’t "sneak up" on opposing pitchers the way he used to. His reputation as a hitter precedes him. The opponent is on guard, a lot more likely to turn to something off-speed so as to keep him off-balance.

"I see more (breaking balls now) than when I first came up," Leake said.

As with all of the baseball bromides, "pitchers can’t hit’’ is well-rooted in reality. But it doesn’t readily explain how so many pitchers can go from being the best hitters on their high school teams to being all but totally inept in the majors.

Granted, there’s no comparison between facing Travis Tritt back on the sandlots and former Reds' left-hander Travis Wood, who starts tonight for the Cubs (1.83 ERA, 13 hits, 13K's in 19 2/3 innings), but it still seems incongruous.

Would all these pitchers be this helpless at the plate if they’d at least been able to bat in the minors? Leake never had that disadvantage; he went straight to the majors, so he was able to build upon his familiarity with being a position player at Arizona State when he wasn’t pitching. At ASU, he played every position except catcher and third base.

"I think it (being a pitcher in the minors who is batted for by a designated hitter) does take away a little bit of the edge of guys wanting to hit,’’ Leake said.

"But there are guys who were standouts and great position players when they were younger who took seriously. You’ve got guys like (former pitcher) Mike Hampton (lifetime .246 hitter) who took pride in it. He was a hitter, a ninth hitter. He wasn’t a pitcher hitting. I don’t want to speak for him, but I’m sure he felt like he was in the lineup for a reason.’’

Leake said he ‘‘gets enough swings’’ in batting practice to stay sharp, even though he doesn’t get quite as many as the position players.

"You don’t want to get as many swings as them, anyway, because you’re a ‘pitcher-first,’ " he said. ‘‘But you can get what you want. If you ask anybody, they’ll give you soft-toss or they’ll throw extra to you.’’

Leake said he’d "hate to see" the DH rule come to the NL.

‘‘It (not having the DH) takes more strategy; it takes more thinking,’’ he said. ‘‘Not taking anything away from the AL, but as a manager over here you have to think a little bit more. It makes this game fun, to have it be a chess match, rather than ‘Here’s my nine guys for the whole game.’ ’’